Preface

Pictures of skyscrapers, traffic-clogged highways, and discos increasingly form our image of contemporary Asia. These pictures accurately reflect the rapid economic development and growing urbanization evident throughout most of the region. But they fail to convey another equally important reality: In most Asian countries, 70 percent to 80 percent of the people still live on small farms or in rural villages or small towns where they struggle to eke out an existence still heavily dependent on agriculture, forestry, and fisheries.

In recent years the Ford Foundation's largest commitments in Asia have been for programs focused on the nexus between rural poverty and resources. These programs have sought to improve the incomes and welfare of poor rural households through more productive, participatory, sustainable, and equitable management of land, water, and forest resources. Common to these programs have been efforts to give rural households secure access to natural resources; to help the responsible government units—forest departments, irrigation agencies, and fisheries bureaus—redefine their role as facilitators of development rather than the "doers" of development; and to empower local communities to play a more effective role in resource management.

The focus on poverty and resources in Asia, now part of a broader Foundation concern with asset building and community development, originated in Foundation programs that began in the early 1950s in India with support of the national community development program. In the 1960s, the specter of mass starvation led to an emphasis on increasing food production to feed the region's rapidly expanding populations. Funding for agricultural research and the creation of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and other international research centers helped produce new varieties of rice and other basic food crops. When combined with water, fertilizer, pesticides, higher prices, and effective extension services, these new varieties dramatically increased yields and brought about what became popularly known as the Green Revolution.

By the 1970s, as confidence grew in the world's ability to feed itself, the Foundation's efforts and those of other development agencies shifted to helping those left behind—notably, the hundreds of millions of rural households without the skills and resources to benefit from the new technology. Poverty reduction became the primary objective; comprehensive rural development the means. To bring development closer to the people, the Foundation funded numerous village-level projects, of which the Sukhamajri project in northern India and rural development efforts in northeast Thailand are informative examples.